Wild Woods Maple wins “best in class” and “best in show” at the 2025 Vermont maple festival!
All the entries for the maple syrup contest at this years maple festival in St. Albans VT.
It is mid-summer as I write this post. The memory of a cherished moment that we were able to experience is still fresh in my mind. I have been meaning to write this blog for quite some time to tell the world of our accomplishment. I guess I have been putting it of for the usual reasons; too busy, not enough time and always wondering how do I tell the story without sounding egotistical. I have had the pleasure of engaging many customers at farmer’s markets since winning the award. They all seem so happy for our business and family I decided it was time to buckle down and tell this story.
Our “best in class” amber/rich and our “Excellent” dark/robust.
Our 2025 maple season was an absolute emotional roller-coaster. We were unable to tap all our trees in the beginning due to ridiculous snow depth. Adding to the drama, some sap lines were buried in the deep snow and needed to be dug out. I was keeping the roof of the sugar house raked off which was a major chore, it is a large building. With this rugged start and memories of inefficiency from the 2024 season still fresh in my mind I was stressed.
The warm days did come and the sap started to flow from the half of our forest we had tapped. I got the reverse osmosis machine cleaned and all the equipment was working as it should. I made the usual rounds in the forest and fixed sap tubing leaks, all the woods were tight. We did our first couple boils and made some really good syrup in record time. I was immediately aware that I was much more efficient in the sugar house before and after each boil. The year prior was my first season at our new operation and I was sugaring at a much larger scale than I ever had before. I was slow that season but it seemed as if I was moving much faster this season and it felt good!
Days flew by as they usually do during a maple season here in Vermont. Those days turned into weeks and our pile of full stainless steel barrels grew. At some point I had the fleeting thought that I should enter a maple syrup contest. It had always been in the back of my mind to do so. I wanted to know how our maple syrup would fare against the competition. What would the judges think of this product we have worked so hard to make? This was a large curiosity of mine. We never had the time or bandwidth to seriously consider entering and up until this point, we had not. I downloaded the entry instructions for the 2025 Vermont maple festival in St. Albans. I read them. I filled a pint like it said to do. I also labeled the container like it said to do and I set it aside. The container filled that day was our entry for the dark/robust class of syrup. A few days later I did the same. That pint would become our entry into the amber/rich class of maple syrup. Both those entries went in the fridge and we managed to get them dropped off before the deadline.
The maple season was winding down. We only have 4-6 weeks to produce our crop of organic maple syrup for the year, and it is exhausting. We were happy with our season and the quality of our sap that we get from the trees. The sugar content was relatively high and it just seemed really clean all season. One afternoon we were getting ready to enjoy some time outside of our sugar house. We were going for a ride on the local rail trail when my phone rang. I answered and a gentleman asked if I had entered syrup in the maple festival’s contest, I said yes. We learned that we should attend the banquet as we would be getting an award! We rescheduled our lives and were giddy with excitement as the day approached. We had never been to the maple festival in St. Albans and this would be our first time going.
The maple festival here in Vermont is a really big deal. The downtown area of St. Albans turns into the state’s largest celebration of maple syrup production. There are baking contests, live bands, vendors, window display competitions for the local stores and the main event for us; the maple syrup contest. We managed to park close to the festivities and made our way to the building where the results of the contests were displayed. We were so proud to see the maple syrup we had made in our sugar house sitting in the center of the entries with a large “best in class” blue ribbon! It was the amber/rich syrup entry that selected as the best in class. Our dark/robust also had a blue ribbon for excellence on it as well. Both our entries were graded on density, color, clarity and of course flavor. To see that neither entry was disqualified like so many others had been was a huge confidence boost to our whole family. We counted about 80 total entries in the maple syrup contest from various maple syrup producers around the state.
Our family with our blue ribbons at the 2025 VT maple festival.
We enjoyed the afternoon at the festival and eventually made our way to the VFW where the awards banquet was being held. We had an amazing dinner and enjoyed talking with other people about the maple season that had just finished. We felt so proud to get called up for our awards. Our amber/rich entry that was selected as the “best in class” competed against the other class winners for golden/delicate and dark/robust. Our syrup won that competition between the classes and received what I consider to be a once in a lifetime award. That award is called “best in show” and we won it! It felt surreal to be in front of everyone receiving a huge blue ribbon. I am so proud of our family for putting in the work to make the highest quality maple syrup we possibly can. I am also eternally grateful to the people who organize the whole festival to provide such an experience to maple syrup producers like us.
I congratulated all the other winners and we received some more congratulations from other people in attendance. We made our way towards the door at the end of the night and we were stopped by someone who had tasted our syrup during the judging process. They really wanted us to know how much they loved the flavor of our syrup and that was special to hear. I took very little credit for the flavor and gave all the credit to the trees in our forest that give us the sap.
We felt so proud that evening! We will never get financially rich from our maple syrup production but the richness provided from getting that award will never be forgotten. I have since ran into other people who make it a point to tell me how much they loved the flavor of our syrup we entered into that contest. I guess I’ll enter the contest again next year, the pressure is on now! We love what we do. It takes all our time but we love it. This award has been so reassuring that we are doing things the right way. I’m happy to say that we make award winning organic maple syrup.
